The 25th Ockham Lecture - 'Extreme Computing for the SKA Radio Telescope'

Date: Tuesday 24 October 2017
Time: 17:00 - 19:00
Venue
TS Eliot Theatre, Merton College

Given by Dr Peter Braam (Wyliot Fellow), Founder, CEO, President and Director, Cluster File Systems, Inc.

The lecture was introduced by the Warden, Sir Martin Taylor FRS, and was followed by a Q&A session.

Watch the lecture

Abstract

"The Square Kilometer Array radio telescope is currently under design by institutions in ten countries for deployment in remote deserts around 2022. With over a million antennae, It will be a revolutionary, CERN-like, scientific instrument to study astrophysics. Ultra large HPC systems will transform a massive stream of antenna data—as much as an exa-byte per day—into scientific data for worldwide consumption. The steepest challenges lie in the 50-year expected instrument lifetime in an age when computing is evolving much faster, but also in handling sheer scale, including achieving extreme parallelism in the algorithms and providing 200 PB/sec of memory bandwidth, under strict power constraints. This presentation covers an overview of the computing required for the telescope at the intersection of physics, mathematics and computer science."

The Ockham Lecture series

The Merton College Physics Lecture (the Ockham, or Occam, Lecture, so named in honour of one of the greatest—if unattested—alumni of the College and of his philosophical principle of intellectual discipline) started in 2009 and is held once a term. It is organised by the physics tutors of the College to promote both intellectual curiosity and social cohesion of the Merton Physics community.

Attendance is by invitation: All Merton physicists (and sympathisers!) belonging to the three Common Rooms (JCR, MCR and SCR) are invited, as are the Old Members. Their guests are also accommodated, space permitting.